Senator Hatch Thinks it's High Time to Fix Barriers to Medical Marijuana Research; It Is

On Wednesday, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah came out in support of medical marijuana and, in particular, removing federal barriers to medical marijuana research. This is a welcome development. Hatch, the longest serving senator in U.S. history, comes from a state where there is a strong aversion to intoxicating substances. Nevertheless, lawmakers in Utah recognized the medical potential of cannabis-derived medicines when they legalized cannabidiol oil (CBD) in 2014.

The MEDS Act, first introduced by Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, would greatly streamline the arduous process of research into marijuana’s medicinal applications. As I recently discussed at a Capitol Hill event, as well as in a recent article and on a recent Cato Daily Podcast, it is unnecessarily difficult to research marijuana. All research on controlled substances must satisfy various legal requirements in order to be authorized by the federal government. Marijuana researchers, however, must jump through the additional hoop of acquiring government-authorized marijuana from the only place where it is legally grown: the University of Mississippi. The government’s supply, however, is often inadequate to the needs of researchers, as well as being generally low quality. Nevertheless, the federal government has consistently argued that, under various UN treaties, it cannot authorize more than one source of legal, research-grade marijuana. This is despite the fact that there are many sources from which researchers can acquire nearly every other Schedule I drug.

Late in the Obama administration, the DEA opened up applications for more suppliers of research-grade marijuana. After taking office, Attorney General Sessions apparently shut down that program by simply not considering the 25 or so applications that were submitted. Among other things, the MEDS Act forbids the attorney general from establishing a quota for marijuana manufacturers and requires all applications to be acted on within 30 days.

Sessions has also asked Congress to repeal the Rohrbacher-Farr amendment, which prohibits the Department of Justice from using federal funds to interfere with states that authorize medical marijuana. In other words, while much of the country is moving on to legalizing marijuana for recreational use, Sessions is still trapped in the past and fighting against medical marijuana.

That’s not surprising, as much of our marijuana policies are trapped in the past. From the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act of 1937 to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, our marijuana policy was largely created by people who believed Reefer Madness is a level-headed and reasonable portrayal of the effects of marijuana use. That’s like running the Smithsonian’s natural history museum based on insights gleaned from Raquel Welch’s 1,000,000 Years B.C. or The Land Before Time. I applaud Senator Hatch for pushing to update our prehistoric laws.